CHAPTER EIGHT

Ella slouched against the wall of the coroner"s office lobby. There was a radio playing somewhere, and it chafed her last nerve like a cheese grater to the frontal lobe. The place had all the ambiance of a dentist"s waiting room complete with wilting ficus in the corner and chairs upholstered in an eye-gouging pattern – visual assault in furniture form.

Luca was flipping through his notebook in a chair beside her. He nudged her and said, ‘What do you make of this dam situation?'

‘Could be anything. Assassination, jilted mistress, some fundraiser faux pas.'

‘No. I mean the dam. The thing that caused this drought.'

Ella chewed her cheek as she mulled it over. The dam. The albatross around Liberty Grove"s neck, apparently. Choking the life out of the land like a concrete noose.

"It"s a raw deal, that"s for sure. I"m not sure what Toledo sold these people, but whatever he promised, he delivered a kick in the teeth instead."

‘Right. If he had a hand in the construction of that dam, it means we've got a suspect pool the size of the goddamn Potomac.'

. ‘My money"s on something personal. Toledo had enemies, sure. Goes with the territory. But this?' She waved a hand, encompassing the dingy lobby, the body waiting for them down the hall. ‘This feels like more than politics. More than business.'

The receptionist, a tight-faced woman with a hairsprayed helmet, cleared her throat pointedly. "The coroner will see you now." She jabbed a button, and the heavy security door buzzed open.

She pushed off the wall, Luca unfolding himself from the chair with a liquid grace that had her mouth going dry. Damn him and his genetic blessings. It just wasn"t fair.

The stench of antiseptic and industrial-grade bleach smacked Ella in the sinuses as they navigated the labyrinth of halls. She breathed deep, letting the antiseptic burn scour away the stale lobby air. It was a smell that had become perversely comforting over the years, a twisted sort of welcome mat for the weekly waltzes with death.

The door to the autopsy room loomed before them, as imposing and ominous as the gates of hell. Ella"s hand hesitated on the knob for the space of a heartbeat, a flutter of trepidation in her chest. Stupid. Just another day at the office for her, another peek behind the veil to poke at the leftovers of human cruelty.

No big deal. Nothing to get jittery over.

She wrenched the door open, and Luca fell beside her as they crossed the threshold into the chilly, white-tiled box of a room. The light beat down on the stainless steel table in the center. The draped figure atop it was as still and silent as the grave. And beside the body was a white-haired scarecrow of a man in a lab coat.

‘Welcome, Agents,' the coroner wheezed. He had the weathered look of a man who"d spent decades elbow-deep in society"s grim leavings and come out the other side cracking wise about it over a beer at the local dive. ‘I"m Dr. Harris Fenneman, chief medical examiner.'

‘Agent Ella Dark. This is my partner, Agent Luca Hawkins.' Ella went for the handshake but then thought better of it. Probably best not to make physical contact with someone who spent their days sifting through human innards. ‘Thanks for seeing us on short notice.'

‘Seeing as you brought me such an interesting case, I suppose I can make an exception.' Fenneman"s eyes gleamed behind bifocals as he led them over to the gurney. ‘I just got finished twenty minutes ago.'

Luca shifted beside her. Poor boy wasn"t quite used to dancing with death on the daily yet.

Fenneman snapped on a pair of gloves and placed a hand on the white sheet that concealed the body. Ella steeled herself for the reveal. No matter how many corpses she"d cataloged over the years, that first glimpse was always a gut punch straight to the soul.

She eyeballed Luca and he gave her his best I'm ready nod. Showtime.

"Alright, Doc," she said. "Walk us through it."

‘Okay, we'll start with the obvious.'

Fenneman whipped back the sheet, revealing Ricky Toledo"s bloated corpse. His skin was tallow pale, his sunken eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling tiles. Ella"s throat clenched as she took in the ruin of the golden boy politician, but she didn"t allow herself to look away. She forced her gaze over every tragic inch, each purple-black bruise and waterlogged limb. This was his vigil, and she"d bear witness.

Even with the Y-incision marring his torso and his skin gone grey and waxy with death"s pallor, Ricky Toledo was still a remarkably handsome man. Strong jaw, patrician nose, hair artfully tousled like he"d just rolled out of bed after a marathon session of mattress Olympics.

Ella swallowed past the sudden stone in her throat. Sent up a silent prayer to whatever tarnished saint watched over the souls of the violently departed. I"m sorry, buddy. No one deserves to go out like this.

Under the wrenching pity, another realization was horning in – a tickle at the back of her brain, an alarm bell muffled by a pillow. Something wasn"t right here. Something beyond the obvious wrongness of the body on the slab.

Then it hit her like a smack to the sinuses.

An odd smell. Chemical. Brackish. Out of place, even amongst the sense-assaulting chokehold of death.

Luca leaned in and immediately recoiled, clearly catching the same thing. ‘Christ, what died in here? Besides the obvious.'

Fenneman"s lips thinned to a grim slash. ‘I noticed that as well. Most unusual, given the circumstances. But we"re getting ahead of ourselves. Preliminary C.O.D. is drowning.'

‘Drowning,' Ella repeated.

The coroner traced Toledo's bloated lungs with a finger. He had the practiced moves of a man well-versed in the art of reading a corpse. ‘Asphyxiation. Pulmonary edema, to be exact. Including what we call in the trade a foam cone. But in layman's terms, he drowned, and not just that, but Mr. Toledo here was submerged underwater long after he'd expired.'

Ella latched onto that. ‘He was held underwater after death?'

‘Yes indeed. His lungs retained an incredible amount of water, enough to expand them and damage his ribcage. The body only begins to inhale water post-mortem. During the act of drowning, it fights to keep water out.'

Ella cataloged the details. Toledo's killer had ensured he was well and truly dead before bringing him up for air. Watery overkill.

‘Time of death?'

‘Around midnight last night.'

‘Any other injuries of note?' Luca asked, craning to get a better look. ‘Defensive wounds, bruising, anything to suggest he fought back?'

‘Most intriguing that you should ask.' Fenneman circled to the foot of the gurney and peeled back the sheet further to expose Toledo"s legs. Angry red bands marched around his ankles, the flesh scraped raw in places. ‘Note the distinct patterning here, the linear abrasions concentrated over the malleoli.'

Ella and Luca shared a look. A piece slots into place with a rusty click.

‘He was restrained,' Ella said. Not a question. ‘Tied up before he took his last swim.'

‘So it would seem. And speaking of swims...' Fenneman consulted the chart, traced a liver-spotted finger down the toxicology report. ‘Mr. Toledo's ethanol levels were through the roof. Blood alcohol content of 0.26. For reference, 0.08 is legally drunk and 0.4 is pushing coffin-territory."

Luca said, "So Toledo was absolutely plastered."

‘You could say that again," said Fenneman. "But more importantly, I found traces of Flunitrazepam in his system."

Ella stiffened. "Flunitrazepam? As in Rohypnol?"

"Got it in one.'

The vise around Ella"s ribs tightened a notch. Rohypnol. Flunitrazepam. Skeezy fratboy knockout juice, the date rapist"s weapon of choice. But dosed high enough, it"d take down a bull moose, let alone a tipsy politician.

An ugly picture was starting to take shape. Toledo, three sheets to the wind and flying high as a kite. Probably cruising the bar scene, gladhanding his constituents, his adoring public.

Easy pickings for an opportunistic killer.

Slip a little something into his drink, wait for him to start pinwheeling, then spirit him away. No fuss, no muss. Drown him at your leisure and dump the body without so much as a peep.

It wouldn't be quick or clean, but it was coldly efficient.

Ella"s gaze strayed down, down, catching on the ring of mottled purple circling Toledo"s ankles. Bruises in a near-perfect band, like cheap anklets.

‘Doc, these contusions here,' she said. ‘Any idea what could have caused them? Fetters? Zip ties?'

Fenneman checked his notes and said, "It"s certainly pre-mortem bruising, but I couldn"t say exactly what caused them. There were no traces of any foreign substances or elements down there. However, I will say that whatever held his ankles together was quite malleable. The material rubbed against his skin, causing these chafe marks."

Ella stared down at Toledo"s ruined body as her brain spun in feverish circles. Ankle abrasions. Drowning. Poisoning. A big-shot politician who'd dried out an entire town.

And that bizarre smell. It tickled her nostrils and set off quiet alarm bells. She rounded on Fenneman, fixing him with a look that demanded answers.

The coroner hemmed and hawed, clearly reluctant to speculate beyond his pay grade. But Ella just crossed her arms and waited. Finally, Fenneman caved like a sandcastle at high tide.

‘If I had to hazard a guess – and mind you, this is pure conjecture – I"d say it"s indicative of stagnant water. The kind that"s been sitting for a while, breeding all manner of unsavory anaerobic bacteria.' He plucked off his glasses, polished them on his lapel. A nervous tic if Ella had ever seen one. ‘Combined with the mineral tang, it suggests an enclosed space with high iron content.'

And just like that, the final tumbler fell and the lock sprang open. Ella could see it clear as a blood spatter on a white tile. Ricky Toledo, sloshed out of his mind and dosed to the gills, easy pickings for a predator with an agenda. Hauled off to God knows where, some dank pit where the water waited, cold and black as a spider"s heart. Bound like a prisoner to the gallows, fully conscious as they closed over his head, as he sucked vile fluid instead of air.

‘He wasn"t just drowned,' Luca said hoarsely. ‘He was–'

‘Weighed down,' Ella finished. ‘The unsub bound his feet and threw him in a well or cistern to drown like vermin.'

Luca raked a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed and spiky. ‘Concrete shoes.'

Silence descended for a minute. A thousand questions were crowding Ella"s tongue, begging for voice. But for once, she found herself at a loss for what came next.

But Luca continued, ‘And that means, not only did our killer leave poor Toledo to die, but he stayed close enough to drag him out once the job was done.'

‘Our killer watched him drown,' Ella said. ‘Left him to fester, then plucked him out and dumped him in a field.'

Why was the next logical question, but the word seemed inadequate in the face of such cruelty.

She thought back to Carl Jessup"s haunted eyes, the ravaged fields, the dam looming like a death sentence over Liberty Grove. All that anger, all that bitterness left to curdle in the Virginia sun.

Could a desperate farmer have done this? Maybe a group of desperate farmers? Sacrifice this big-talking city boy like something out of the Wicker Man?

Ella blew out a breath, feeling like she"d aged a decade in the last ten minutes. Ricky Toledo lay still and silent, taking his secrets to a watery grave six feet deep and lined with concrete, but Ella had never been one for letting the dead keep their mysteries. One way or another, she"d drag the truth up from the depths and into the light. Even if it half-drowned her in the process.

‘Hawkins,' she said. ‘We've got a lot of work to do.'